To complete our IDL on earthquakes and volcanoes, P4/5 have learned about the pros and cons of living in areas of the world where there are volcanoes and earthquakes. They wrote a piece of persuasive writing to convince people that living in Iceland had lots of positive aspects and found out how engineers try to make buildings earthquake-proof. The children worked in co-operative groups to build earthquake-proof buildings and then we tested them using a huge tray of jelly to be the shaking ground!
All of P567 have been working hard at the Christmas cupcake challenge making bubblegum, chocolate orange, lemon sherbet and honeycomb flavour cupcakes for their enterprise task. They all look great!
The PPPS which are Matthew, Aaron, Abi, Rowan, Sophie and Kaitlyn are making crafts for Port Ellen’s Christmas fair. We made lots of items and it only took two days to make everything. We made tin cans, star mirrors, taguls and finger puppet nativities. The star mirrors are £1:50 there are 7 of them. The nativity is £2:00 and there is 5 sets of them. The taguls are £1:00 and there are 8 of them. The star mirrors are £1:50 and there are 7 of them. The tin cans are 50p and there 6 of them. We had to create balance sheets and work out unit costs to be able to price our items, to make sure we make a profit.
We have been making things for the Christmas fair. We have made tiles with a map of Islay on it, we have made rainbow coloured Christmas baubles with sparkles and we have made snow globes. We have made a book on an app called book creator on the ipads with the Christmas fair notes on it. We also designed a cupcake for the cupcake competition. We made crunchie flavoured red cupcakes with a Santa hat on them. We have been learning how to make a balance sheet and how to make a chart on excel and we also did market research for the project. I hope everything sells really well.
On Wednesday 5th October, P5/6/7 from Port Ellen Primary School went to Cairnmore woods to live in Mesolithic times. At school we all have four clans, The Golden Eagle Clan, The Arctic Fox Clan, The Orca Clan and the Red Deer Clan. In our clans we got given a leaf and we had to find out what tree the leaf came from and then when we were at the woods we had to find a tree in our clans that aaas the same tree as the leaf. We then made a den at the woods. We made a model of a village for our clan and an actual den. The Golden Eagle clan had a beach tree. The 
Arctic Fox clan had a sycamore tree. The Orca clan had an oak tree and The Red Deer clan had the ash tree. The Golden Eagle Clan had a tree and they made their den under it and made the model outside. They also had a spy hole where they could see the Orca clan who had a mud trap near them. The Arctic Fox Clan’s base was a fallen over tree that we could get over to get to our den but the rest of our base had a massive mud pile in and we used some of the mud to make our mini village. We did a hunt for sweets, this was to improve our hunter gathering skills. The Orca clan got the most sweets. We also made clay tree spirits to leave guarding our dens. We had really good fun. We learned to observe objects better than we did before. We hope to go back soon.
On Wednesday 5th October p5,6,7 went on a trip to the woods. After we had made our dens and completed some challenges we went to have our lunch near the beach. When we went to the beach Mr Gairns had set up a fire for us to have our lunch round, and we had brought firewood from the woods to put on our fire. When we had finished all our lunch some of us went to gut some trout so we could put it on the fire to cook and we also got to roast home grown apples as well. We put the trout and apples on sticks to cook them and when they were cooked they tasted delicious. We also got to try other Mesolithic foods for our lunch, cockles and nuts. Not many people liked the cockles but we did like the trout and apples. It was interesting to see what food would have been like in Mesolithic times.
On Thursday 15th September p6/7 from all the schools from Islay and Jura went to Stirling University and while we were there we got to dissect fish. When we were dissecting the fish I was working with Rowan and we were testing to check the bacteria in the kidney but first me and Rowan had to push away a bubble that was protecting the kidney. After we pushed away the bubble we stuck a plastic stick in the kidney to get a sample of blood to rub it on a petri plate so that when they take it out a warm fridge they would be able to see the bacteria that was in the fish’s kidney. After we dissected the fish we did a quiz that had nine questions in it and me and Rowan got 7 questions correct and two questions incorrect. When we got back outside we all got tour of the university and we even got to see what the rooms would look like. After the tour we headed back to the youth hostel.
Today Ellie, Kaitlyn and Sarah found out about the Forth Road Bridge because their class are going to Stirling for an annual school trip. They will be visiting Bannockburn, The Forth Road Bridge, Stirling castle and Stirling university. We found out that over 70,000 vehicles cross the bridge every day and over 24 million vehicles cross the bridge every year. It took around 6 years to build and seven people died building it. On the 5th December 2015 a small 2cm crack was found and the bridge had to be rebuilt. The bridge is 51 years old. It is owned and operated by Network Rail. It is the 4th longest bridge in the world. It is over the fifth of the forth. It cost about £19.5 million. It is Britians first all steel bridge. It used nearly 40,000 tonnes of steel and 125,000 cubic metres of concrete. The designers were Benjamin Baker and John Fowler. They will be visiting it next week, hope they have a great time. By Kaitlyn, Sarah and Ellie<img
On the 25th of August, Port Ellen Primary along with their teacher Mrs Clark, Mr Gairns, Mrs Logan and Struan’s dad Mr Colthart, went to a fascinating archaeological trip to the Giant’s Grave. We were going there because we really wanted to learn about Islay History. As we got onto the bus, I was filling up with excitement. We were in the bus for quite a while until we got to Nerabus. As we got off the bus, I couldn’t wait to start walking to the Giant’s Grave. Also, Professor Steven Mithin walked with us.
On the trip, we walked one hour and ten minutes to the Giant’s Grave. Before we got there, my friend Abi fell into a big stream and got soaking wet. When we were all set we started walking again. On the way, we saw loads of blood red and white mushrooms. They looked really interesting. Finally we got to the Giant’s Grave. I thought it looked amazing and very inspiring. It was as peaceful as the sun crawling up a hill. As we were strolling to the heart of the dig I gazed at the awesome rocks forming the Giant’s grave.
